The Skrayling Tree

Oona and her husband Ulrich are taking a much needed vacation in Nova Scotia. When Ulrich is kidnapped by a mysterious troop of Kakatanawa warriors, she embarks on a strange journey, away from the 1940's to 1135 A.D. There she meets Anyanawatta, who Longfellow named Hiawatha, and whom is about to set off from the shores of Gitche Gumee to follow the path of his destiny. Along the way his friend, White Crow, joins them, riding his magnificent mammoth, Bes. White Crow is also following his myth, his destiny. The men were, in their way, expecting Oona...to them, with her albino coloring and skills at archery, she is White Buffalo Woman incarnate.

Her story is not the only one told...after awhile we leave her, and join her father, Elric of Melniboné. In order to save himself and his friend Moonglum, and hopefully the Multiverse, Elric has decided to take part in a Dream of a Thousand Years. Hanging crucified on a ship's rigging, he hopes that by traveling into this dream and living out the thousand years he will be lead to the answer...and his sword, Stormbringer. In fact, it is on his quest to find the blacksmith who forged his weapon and its sisters that he runs into a Viking pirate, Gunnar, who wears a mask of silver. Elric becomes a passenger on Gunnar's long ship, and journeys across churning, dangerous waters to see the fabled City of Gold that exists in Vineland. Gunnar promises his men treasure, but he is seeking something entirely more dangerous...the end of all life.

The final story is told by Ulrich himself. He was kidnapped, not for harm, but for good...for chaos and law are about to clash once more, and the balance, the precarious place where all lives exist, depends on the meeting of these three heroes, who will each bring with them the only thing that can restore the dying Skrayling Tree.

To grasp this incredibly intricate universe, you have to understand that it is actually a Multiverse...a thousand possibilities, a thousand time periods and ideas and hopes. In this book, the Multiverse is represented by the Skrayling Tree, housed in the Katanawa's City of Gold. Oona, the Dreamtheif's daughter, and her companions are very careful about what they say or what they ask, knowing that by making certain comments they can change or ruin their myth, the destiny that they follow. A careless word on future expectations can cause the "branch" they travel upon to split off in a new direction, or even break off entirely, Chaos and Law are constantly fighting each other...both are absolutes, but the protagonists in these books follow the Balance, not Law or Chaos...because they understand that there are no absolutes, that without one, you can not have the other. You can not have life. So, they fight, not for law, as you may expect, them being the good guys, but for a medium, a balance between the two.

The journeys that these three take are almost dreams...Elric's literally is, even though he exists in this world, and fights and lives and journeys in a physical form, he must live out the dream for one thousand years (even if he finds what he needs sooner, he cannot wake up). Even though the other two have actually journeyed to that time, there is a dream like quality to Oona's following of her myth, in Ulrich meeting different people, such as his cousin Lobkowitz. There is always a quality of dreaminess, of surrealness. This is even more so as we see the worlds from different eyes...Elric sees the world as giant, the plants and everything are huge, because the trip, his reality, has shrunk him to pygmy size, like his companions the Pukawatchis, who claim that White Crow is an evil enemy who stole their precious relics. Oona is larger, and so sees the world around her much differently. Also, many of the actions and descriptions have a symbolic feel to them. For instance, some of the relics (if not all) that White Crow stole have brothers in other myths...the perpetual pipe, with its bowl of red stone has Grail-like connotations, and many of the scenes where Ulrich can feel the presence of his father in law, because their souls are bound, make it hard to tell if Ulrich is himself, or a man acting as a symbolic Elric. Indeed, the similarity in their names makes this seem more definite, as sometimes you cannot tell if it is Ulrich's thoughts you hear, or if Elric has somehow reached in and taken over. It's entirely possible that Elric could take hold of Ulrich, for both of them are deeply bonded through the sword Stormbringer, which absorbs the souls of those it slays to feed and strengthen its user.

I call this story intricate, and it is. All these little tendrils are woven together, and the three stories play out and meet at the crucial point. Having read most of the Elric stories I can say that Moorcock has really built up the series, adding layer upon layer, making the first stories simple adventures in comparison. The abiding richness and strangeness of this universe grows with every book, making for strange, dense and satisfying reading.